


Waiting for Your Heart's Defection

by elegantstupidity



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/pseuds/elegantstupidity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy discovers that Octavia is not really a temp and neither is her friend Clarke. Of course, everything is more complicated than he’s ready to deal with.</p><p>Bellarke Valentines 2016 gift</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for Your Heart's Defection

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Bellarke Valentines to thelightreflects/takemehome21! I tried to do Friends to Lovers for you and I hope you like it!

In retrospect, it probably should not have taken an honest-to-god hostage situation to learn what Octavia does for a living. 

_To be fair, when it turns out your baby sister works as some sort of jack-booted G-woman and not at a high-end temp agency, some confusion is natural._  It's a thought that's less comforting than Bellamy means it to be, but he's had quite the day. Soothing thoughts don’t always lend themselves to situations that involve guns, hostages, or complete upheavals of his entire world view.

It’s going to take more than a shock blanket and a reassuringly flirtatious EMT to recalibrate Bellamy’s sense of self. 

He’d spent so many years, arguably his entire life, doing his best to protect Octavia. His sister, his responsibility. No one else in their shitty neighborhood in east DC was going to help him out. Their mother hardly even helped Bellamy out. 

But it turns out that maybe O doesn’t need his brand of protection anymore. 

(There he was, working in the closet of an office afforded to him on the Re-Elect Sydney campaign, doing his best to put together a coherent speech from what the interns compiled. He’d heard shouting out in the bullpen earlier, but since that wasn’t such an unusual occurrence given some of his more hotheaded coworkers, elected to ignore it and hopefully get out of the office by midnight. That hope was shattered when someone burst through his door, which he was also prepared to ignore. Right up until he caught sight of the semi-automatic just before it connected with his temple.

When he came to, he was locked in his office sans phone, computer, and landline. Neither the semi-automatic, nor the man wielding it, made another appearance. Bellamy briefly considered kicking the door down, but the muffled sound of voices in the hallway and his still throbbing head were enough to make him reconsider.

By the time SWAT kicked in his door and another gun was brandished in his face, the voices Bellamy heard had been gone for nearly fifteen minutes. 

“Mr. Blake?” asked the massive man responsible for this round of gun brandishing from the doorway.

Bellamy didn’t even think to question how he knew his name. Instead, he nodded and replaced the desk lamp he’d grabbed in not-panic at the sound of the doorknob rattling. He was not about to get caught off guard again.

His rescuer turned back to the hall and offered a sharp nod to whoever stood there before turning back to Bellamy. “If you’ll follow me, you just need to answer some questions before—“ 

And that’s where Bellamy stopped paying attention. Because over the SWAT guy’s impossibly broad shoulders, unnecessarily broadened by his tactical gear, Bellamy saw something that made his blood run cold. 

Octavia, also in full tactical gear, crossing into his field of vision and walking away without a word. Bellamy stumbled to the door, making SWAT Guy take a step back, so he could make sure the blow to his head wasn’t causing hallucinations. 

It was definitely Octavia. Sure, she still wore her helmet and goggles and face mask. And sure, her flak jacket and cargo pants were bulky and matched every other agent’s. And sure, he had never before seen her dressed like this. But Bellamy would bet his life that it was Octavia under all that gear.)

He’d been ushered out to the trashed bullpen to answer a seemingly unending list of questions he can’t currently recall before he could even think of following his sister or calling out. All around him, other agents and officers took statements from Bellamy's coworkers, though Octavia wasn't among them. At some point, someone thrust his phone, apparently deemed worthless by the team of hostage takers, into his hands. That was something, at least. It wasn't until after another round of questioning that someone finally noticed that there was a fine trickle of blood coursing down his cheek and he was whisked outside to a waiting ambulance. 

Which is where he’s currently sitting, scratchy blanket draped over his shoulders, trying to figure out what his life has just become.

Mostly, that means he hasn’t taken in anything the paramedic has said to him, though he has noticed in a vague way that she’s pretty and flirting. He’s too preoccupied with the emotional kick to the balls to do much more. 

Bellamy can’t quite wrap his head around the thought of O, his _baby sister_ , doing something so dangerous, and on such a regular basis if this is her _job_ , and not telling him. Doesn’t she trust him? Hasn’t he always told her that he’s there for her, no matter what? Has he actually been a terrible brother all this time?

What shakes him out of the self-pity spiral is a flash of blonde cutting through the spectators, news crews, and milling SWAT agents. He’s never seen her in less than impeccably appropriate office wear. Now, though, her hair is falling haphazardly from where it’s been piled on her head and it looks like she’d just thrown a coat on over her pajamas. She’s still perfectly recognizable, though. 

It's Clarke Griffin. Before tonight, he’d never bothered to really think about or form an opinion on her. She was beautiful, but that was less opinion than fact. She was one of O’s friends, and all he’d ever heard was that they met at work. 

At work. 

Which is apparently _not_ a temp agency.

In seconds, Bellamy is off the bumper of his ambulance, brushing off the concerns of the paramedic, and stalking toward his sister’s “work” friend. 

She straightens when she sees him approach, her face falling into a mask of worry. 

“Bellamy!” she exclaims, extending a hand to him which he ignores. Clarke seems to take this in stride and continues, “Are you all right? Octavia asked if I would come down to see if I could find out what’s going on and see if you were okay.” 

“Octavia sent you?” Bellamy asks, more skeptical than ever. 

“Of course. As soon as the news broke that Senator Sydney’s office was under attack, I called her. Octavia hardly ever stops talking about you, so it’s impossible to forget you work here. She sounded so worried on the phone, I couldn’t say no. She would have come herself, but she’s out on assignment without a way back into the city. Was that okay?”

It sounds true and Clarke’s expression is open and honest as she delivers her story. She even sounds a little out of breath, as if she’s honestly worked up about this. But it doesn’t explain why or how Octavia somehow got herself onto a SWAT team. Even a potential concussion isn’t enough to explain why he saw his sister in that hallway. Bellamy tucks his hands into his pockets to keep them from clenching into fists. He wants answers, god damn it, and it seems like Clarke might have them.  

In spite of himself, Bellamy swallows down his objections and nods tightly. He’s swaying on his feet and can admit, if only to himself, that he is probably not in the right frame of mind to learn any mind blowing information about his sister.

If he weren’t watching so carefully, he would have missed the sheer relief on Clarke’s face at his acceptance. Her eyes flick around the area, assessing and cataloguing information to file away and no doubt checking to make sure O is fully out of sight. 

“I’ve got my car. Octavia said you usually take the metro, but it’s too late for that, so I thought I could give you a ride back to your place. Did the EMTs say you could go?”

Honestly, Bellamy doesn’t know, but he needs to get out of here before he implodes. He shrugs noncommittally and replies, “I’m sure it’s fine.”

Clarke looks genuinely worried, but must see how close he is to breaking (though he hopes to god she doesn’t realize exactly _why_ ) because she smiles and leads him away.

 

* * *

 

Even after the campaign is allowed to go back to work (after a fiery press conference in which Senator Sydney denounced the heinous crime perpetrated against her staff), he spends a lot of time puzzling over the issue of Octavia’s job. After an expansive thought process, Bellamy convinces himself that Octavia is not actually on a SWAT team. For one, he’d looked up the requirements online and he’s pretty sure she would not have been able to cover up a nearly four month training period from him or their friends. For two, there would have been no reason to lie about it in the first place. 

Sure, Bellamy will be the first to admit that he can be a Grade-A asshole, and yes, concerns over Octavia’s safety are quick to bring out the worst in him, but O has never let that stop her before. If she’d really wanted to go into law enforcement, even a branch as dangerous as SWAT, Bellamy would have gotten over himself to support her. Eventually. 

Which still leaves Bellamy with the question of what it is Octavia does for a living. 

“How’s work going, O?” he asks as casually as possible over Thursday drinks. 

She shrugs with a little frown. “Fine,” she sighs. “I haven’t been sent out on any assignments in a bit, so I've been stuck at the office, but I think I’ve got one coming up next week.” 

Bellamy studies his sister for any tells. Octavia is a pretty exceptional liar, but Bellamy’s basically raised her and always knows when she’s trying to pull one over on him. _Or you used to_ , the traitorous part of his brain whispers.

He’s pretty sure she’s telling the truth, so he nods and sips at his beer. Bellamy has had this interaction planned for days and follows his mental script. “What about that girl?” Having predicted O’s blank look, he continues, “The blonde? The one you sent to get me.”

“Clarke?”

“Yeah. Is she getting all the good assignments, then?” 

Octavia studies him for a minute, clearly trying to figure out his angle. 

“If this is your weird way of asking if Clarke’s busy, the answer is yes,” is what she eventually goes with. “She’s basically in charge of scheduling everyone, so her plate is always full.”

Bellamy decides this is also some form of the truth and ignores whatever insinuations accompany it. He turns the information over in his mind and lets the matter drop. For now.

The following week, Bellamy has prepared himself to catch O in the act, unwilling to deal with the uncertainty any longer. What that act might be, he has no idea, but a little uncertainty has never stood in his way. 

(If he’d stopped himself at any point in time, common sense would have told him he was acting like a nut job. Even if his premise—that Octavia’s real job is something she’s keeping secret from him—is true, there’s no reason not to just confront her about it. They’ve gotten over the point in their relationship where they push buttons and press boundaries. It’s not as if she would keep lying when confronted with Bellamy’s suspicions. He thinks. He hopes. 

But the fact of the matter is that Bellamy just isn’t sure. So, he’s going to barrel forward and damn the consequences.)

He makes a point of asking about O’s schedule for the week. Knowing that Clarke is somehow involved in all of this, he figures his best chance at success is if O has some plans with her. Unfortunately, all his sister tells him she has an assignment starting on Tuesday and is going to use Monday to prepare. 

Bellamy does the same. 

Feeling like a creep, Bellamy logs into the tracking app he knows is installed on his sister’s phone. He’d been surprised she hadn’t disabled it like she did in high school, but wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Counting his blessings that no one these days has more than two passwords and his sister has used the same one since she was thirteen, he manages to pull up a real time map of his sister’s location. 

Tuesday rolls around and Bellamy calls in sick so he can watch the green dot that represents Octavia until it moves. It stubbornly hovers over the apartment complex where his sister lives for the whole day. The sun sets and Bellamy worries that O might have left her phone at home when suddenly it winks out and appears down the road. It’s time. 

Bellamy tracks Octavia down to a laundromat in Anacostia. Through the huge window, he watches from across the street as she starts a load and sits down to wait. To a casual observer, nothing would look amiss, but he knows better. Never in his entire life has Bellamy seen his sister sit so still. She doesn’t fiddle with her phone or pace or even go to sleep. She just sits straight-backed in the uncomfortable plastic chairs along the wall. 

The impatience digs in, and Bellamy’s about to step into the street and demand answers when a hand snatches the back of his jacket. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” demands an irate Clarke Griffin.

Jerking out of her grip while he finds his voice again, he examines her. She looks as he’s never seen her before, in a black leather jacket and tall boots. 

“Funny, I would ask you the same question,” he snarls to cover his obvious perusal. 

“I’m keeping you from blowing three months of covert ops!”

Somehow, in all of Bellamy’s wildest imaginings, he’d still held out hope that this was really all in his head. In the back of his mind, he’d thought that he would follow O around tonight and find out that she really was just a temp and the adrenaline and trauma of being a hostage had made him see things. He would willingly go to therapy if it meant this ordeal was all in his head.

But Bellamy has never _heard_ things in his life, and he is positive Clarke Griffin just said the words “covert ops.”

Like spies. 

Like Octavia is a spy.

Clarke has no sympathy for the complete paradigm shift that Bellamy is currently experiencing. She shoves him towards the nondescript sedan he’d completely ignored and growls, “Get in.”

Numbly, Bellamy does as ordered and realizes as soon as he sits down that this is Clarke’s car. Not just in the sense that this is the car that Clarke is currently in possession of, but as in this is the car that she’d used to drive him home. _How did I miss this?_ he wonders distantly and realizes it could apply to most of his life, now. 

For her part, Clarke has her eyes glued on the scene in the laundromat. Three guys have joined O and they appear to be discussing the duffel bag the largest of the three has slung over his shoulder. 

In the passenger seat, Bellamy stares down at his phone screen. That green dot hovers over the laundromat, but there has got to be a mistake. He thumbs through until he finds O’s contact information. He’ll call her and the person who picks up won’t be his sister. His sister is on assignment.

Suddenly the phone is gone from his hand. 

“ _What do you think you're doing?_ ” Clarke says for the second time tonight. “Are you trying to blow your sister’s cover?”

“What the fuck?” is all he can manage. 

She studies him dispassionately and goes for the throat. “Those guys in there? They are not some comic book villains who always lose. Those are some dangerous assholes who will not take kindly to being interrupted by you and they will take that displeasure out on her, got it?”

Bellamy doesn’t—can’t—respond, so Clarke keeps his phone to be safe. 

In the meantime, the deal had already gone down and O is once again alone. Clarke taps at her ear and asks, “You okay?”

He assumes she’s talking to him and is about to respond when Clarke nods sharply. 

“Listen. We’ve got a situation. It would seem your brother has taken it upon himself to play spy,” she says dryly Bellamy’s eyes dart between Clarke beside him and Octavia through the window. He can see his sister’s mouth move, but can’t hear anything in the car. “I stopped him from following you inside.” 

Octavia’s lips move and worry passes over her features. 

Clarke’s eyes slide over to him. “Oh, I think he knows.” She pauses for a moment, but Bellamy is sure she cuts O off. "I told you he was suspicious and you didn’t believe me. I have to bring him in.” She listens to O’s response, her face utterly still. “I don’t care. It’s protocol. Rendez-vous at HQ once you’ve done your dry cleaning.” Clarke’s expression shifts to exasperation as she listens for a moment before replying, “Of course that’s an order.”

“Dry cleaning in a laundromat?” Bellamy asks hoarsely.

Clarke shakes her head impatiently and starts the car. “It means shaking a tail."

Octavia disappears through the back door and Bellamy has never felt more hopeless. 

Clarke turns in her seat to fully face Bellamy. Her expression is utterly serious as she says, “I know this is a lot to take in, but I have to bring you to our headquarters to debrief you. You’ll see your sister when we get there.”

“Uh, no. I don’t even know who you really are.” Bellamy is inordinately proud of how steady his voice is. 

“Then let me introduce myself. My name is Clarke Griffin and I’m an agent for the CIA. Happy?” She offers him a tight-lipped smile and straightens in her seat. A few more taps at her ear and she addresses the empty air once again. “Cinderella is leaving the castle. Rapunzel has the package. Be warned, civilian is en route with Cinderella.”

The fairy tale codenames are too much. Bellamy hunches forward and does his best to just breathe. 

 

* * *

 

The knowledge that Octavia is a spy for the fucking CIA does not become easier to digest as the days go by. It doesn’t help that Clarke Griffin keeps appearing in his life like a bad penny. 

That first night, she’d nearly had to drag him into headquarters, past the wall of stars, and into a conference room. After the fact, Bellamy couldn’t recall anything about it aside from the fact that the seal of the CIA was plastered on every flat surface but the ceiling. He'd checked. 

Before Octavia finally burst in, Clarke made him sign form after form, each assuring the United States government that he would not disclose any information about active agents, investigations, missions, or intelligence. Not that Bellamy actually _knew_ any information about active agents, investigations, missions, or intelligence.

He hardly even knew his sister worked there. 

His brain had basically shut down as soon as Octavia disappeared from his sight. He heard Clarke's whole spiel about how “the integrity of our national security cannot be compromised because you’re pissed at your sister, Bellamy,” but it wasn’t as if he was really listening. Mostly, his attention was focused on convincing himself that none of this was real. That he had just fallen asleep at his desk and he would wake up any minute, call Octavia, and realize that _none of this was real_. 

And then, Octavia was there, proving how very wrong he was and what it felt like to have his last hope shattered. The giant duffel bag was gone and Bellamy distantly noted that she hadn’t even bothered to finish her load of laundry. Her jaw was clenched, tendon ticking the way Bellamy’s did when he was angry. 

“Griffin,” she greeted coldly, moving to stand next to her brother. 

“Agent Blake,” was Clarke’s bland response. “Take your brother home, he’s had quite the evening and I’m sure he has questions he’d like answered. We’ll debrief tomorrow at the agreed location.” She began to collect Bellamy’s signed non-disclosure agreements. When O opened her mouth vent some of her displeasure, Clarke stood, cutting her off as effectively as a gag. “You’re dismissed.”

Bellamy could feel the rage radiating from his sister, but he was used to that. What was more interesting, infuriatingly, was the way Clarke’s gaze remained even and calculating in the face of Octavia’s anger. 

Before he could come up with more reasons to keep staring at the inscrutable blonde, O pulled him from the room.

Of course, because the universe hates him, he has had plenty of opportunity since to study her. Because she keeps showing up where he is. 

First, she was a few people behind him in line at his usual coffee shop. Then, he swore he saw her turn the corner ahead of him as he went to work. The grocery store, the bank, picking up Thai take out; Clarke Griffin had invaded his life. 

At first, he’d thought she was tailing him as some weird intimidation tactic, to make sure he really would keep quiet. When he’d floated the idea by O, she’d just rolled her eyes. 

“Clarke’s my handler, Bell. She recruited me and taught me everything I know. If she really wanted you followed, she wouldn’t do it herself and you wouldn’t know about it.” 

Which means Clarke Griffin is stalking him for personal reasons, not clandestine ones.

Well, today is the day it stops. 

He’s at the bar, trying to drink away the knowledge that his sister is a goddamned _spy_ of all things. Miller’d given up on cheering him up half an hour ago when Bellamy refused to say anything and left to hit on some guy in the corner. 

In fact, some guy who happens to be sitting with the very subject of Bellamy’s annoyance. 

Before he can really register what he’s doing, he’s standing in front of Clarke, drawling, “Can I buy you a drink?” 

It’s not what anyone expected. 

Miller’s staring at him as if he’s grown a second head and the cute Asian guy Miller’s been hitting on looks like this is the best joke he’s ever heard. 

Clarke, though. Clarke looks as unruffled as ever, her gaze just as calculating as Bellamy remembers. After a moment, she stands and makes her way to the bar, leaving Bellamy to follow. 

For a minute, they both lean against the bar in a charged silence until the bartender takes their order. He studies her out of the corner of his eye as they wait for their whiskey cokes. 

She’s back in the look Bellamy’s always associated with her: clean-cut professionalism. Her suit is probably worth more than Re-Elect Sydney pays him in a month and her hair is sleek and pinned back within an inch of its life. When he finishes his perusal, he notices that Clarke is taking him in just as methodically, waiting for him to begin. 

The thing is, Bellamy’s not sure where to begin. According to Octavia, Clarke is directly responsible for introducing his sister to a life of shady, underhanded dealings. Clarke is the reason that O puts her life on the line every time she goes out on assignment (which has been shockingly often apparently). And while O is out there risking everything, Clarke is sitting in her plush office at Langley deciding where to send Agent Blake next. 

What he says, is this: “You know, for a spook, your stealth skills could use some work.”

At this, Clarke turns to Bellamy and raises one golden eyebrow. “Spook? Really?” she asks dryly, before continuing, “And I wasn’t trying to hide from you. I wanted you to know I was around.”

Bellamy snorts. “I just figured you didn’t have the skills, stuck at a desk like you are.”

In spite of himself, Bellamy’s eyes zero in on the way Clarke’s mouth purses in annoyance. She doesn’t rise to his bait though and ignores his barb. “I thought you might have questions you wouldn’t want to ask your sister.”

She’s not wrong, but Bellamy’s not about to admit that.

“So you had to follow me to a bar with someone to lure my friend away,” Bellamy asks incredulously. If she’d planned far enough ahead to take Miller’s preferences into account, then maybe he should be more careful about baiting her. At that moment, the bartender drops off their drinks and whirls away to help her next customer. Bellamy takes a long draft of his to steady himself.

“I gave up on that four days ago. I knew you’d seen me, but you kept pretending you hadn’t, so I decided to let it go.” She looks at him, gaze sharp and calculating again. Bellamy shifts uncomfortably at the scrutiny. Clarke must read something in him, because after a moment, she breaks her gaze and picks up her drink. “It seems I was wrong, though. We can’t talk here, but meet me tomorrow in the National Portrait Gallery, and I'll answer whatever questions you have.” 

If pressed, Bellamy couldn’t explain the thought process that led to him wandering around the National Portrait Gallery on his day off to meet with an actual officer of the United States Intelligence Service. 

But that’s where he is, staring down a portrait of John C. Calhoun, thinking about how much the man looks like a vampire. It’s better than feeding the anger that’s been boiling away inside him since this whole ordeal began.

Just as he’s getting really disconcerted, Clarke appears out of nowhere at his side. She’s making a habit of it.

“Have you got a thing for the Great Triumvirate?” she asks, nodding towards the picture. 

Bellamy shrugs and responds, “They didn’t really have anything on the Second.” That elicits an eye roll worthy of Octavia. 

When it’s clear Clarke doesn’t have anything else to say on the matter, Bellamy turns and spots a bench. It seems like as good a place as any, so he stalks over to it and drops down, raising a brow challengingly when Clarke remains where she’d found him. Her eyes narrow in assessment before she finally follows. 

They sit in the regular eddy of tourists like they’re just here to take in the history rather than talk about things that could potentially get them arrested. 

For her part, Clarke seems perfectly content to wait Bellamy out. The only outward sign of any agitation is her right hand flexing and twitching side to side every so often. 

And, well, Bellamy’s never been the most patient of men. He came for answers; he intends to get them. 

“Why’d you have to pick her?” 

Clarke doesn’t look at him, doesn’t smile and say something kind or comforting. She keeps her eyes on the crowd, flicking from face to face like she’s memorizing them as she forms a response. 

“Your sister is a gifted linguist. She would have made a good analyst, but her interpersonal skills are where she really she shines.” 

Bellamy ducks his head in shame at that. Aurora Blake had insisted on homeschooling Octavia until she was sixteen and rarely let her daughter leave the house. They hadn’t lived in the greatest neighborhood and Aurora was terrified that something would happen to her baby girl. He’d told his little sister every story she ever wanted to hear, but almost always sided with their mother when it came to questions of Octavia’s safety. 

Clarke continues, unheeding of Bellamy’s discomfort, "I first heard about Octavia from my trainer Lincoln. He teaches self-defense, too, and told me about this spitfire in one of his classes. About how she spoke seven languages but was working as a temp for some ridiculous agency.”

“So she actually was a temp?”

“For a while, right after she graduated,” Clarke confirms. “Honestly, I was shocked she wasn’t recruited in school like I was. Most of our linguists come from MIT and Stanford, though.” At this, Bellamy snorts. Of course the fucking CIA would be too good to recruit a girl from a third rate foreign languages program. Unbelievably, Clarke grins at him and shakes her head. It’s the most Bellamy has ever liked her. “Right? It’s ridiculous. I knew almost as soon as I met her that she would make a great operative.”

Just like that, all of Bellamy’s anger and frustration with this woman come rushing back. 

“And that gave you the right to actually recruit her?” Bellamy growls. It’s one thing to recognize how awesome O is and another to decide that makes it acceptable to put her in danger. 

“Yes, because that’s literally my job.”

“Well, maybe you should look into a new career,” he snaps. 

Clarke huffs and gives up on any kind of diplomacy. “Listen,” she says, voice hard and unflinching, “if you want to be mad at me for giving Octavia this choice, you can. But I think you’re angrier that she lied to you. You’re angrier that you’ve spent your whole life shielding your sister from everything that’s even a little dangerous only to find out that maybe she likes danger, that she chose it. But you’d never tell her that, so I’m the one that you’re taking it out on.”

Honestly, Bellamy likes that her anger is a match for his. He likes that she’s cold and controlled even in her irritation. Mostly, he likes that he’s gotten a rise out of her. It’s almost enough to ignore that she’s nailed him down so succinctly. 

He smirks, trying to hide that seed of unease. “I’ve already yelled at O and she informed me she was going to kick my ass if I didn’t stop. You seem like the safer option,” he drawls, turning up the charm.

Clarke raises a pointed eyebrow. _I see what you’re doing_ , it says, but has to fight to suppress a grin. “And who do you think taught your sister to be a badass?”

“O’s always been a badass.”

That earns a real laugh, and against his will, Bellamy’s anger subsides. If she can laugh like that, maybe Clarke isn’t some soulless government lackey. 

“You know you’re not the only one who worries about her, right?” she asks gently. Clarke’s expression is so open and earnest, Bellamy can’t help but trust her. This must be how she convinced O to turn secret agent. "I brought Octavia in, it’s my job to make sure she’s prepared for whatever her assignments might throw at her. I’m her handler and I’m the one who picks her missions and debriefs her and makes sure she’s not heading into a situation blind. I wouldn’t put her in the field if she weren’t an exceptional operative.”

Clarke’s earnestness doesn’t make the reality any easier to swallow, but Bellamy nods anyway. He’s already resigned himself to O’s career path, but Clarke doesn’t know that. 

“Fine,” he says, catching Clarke’s eye. He lets his glare smolder as he intones, “Just know, if anything happens to her, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

Clarke’s shoulders square and any hint at softness in her face dissolves. This is a woman who has life or death decisions rest on her shoulders every day. Bellamy feels his breath catch at the sudden change. 

“I never expected anything less.”

 

* * *

 

As time goes on, Bellamy eventually gives up on hating his sister’s handler. For one thing, Octavia told him to stop being a baby a week after his meeting with Clarke at the National Portrait Gallery. For another, Bellamy’s found it’s impossible for him to hate Clarke Griffin. 

Beneath her steady, cool exterior beats the heart of someone Bellamy could—well, that doesn’t matter, does it?

Anyway, Clarke becomes something like a friend. When they’re at the same bar, it’s on purpose, not because she’s maybe tailing Bellamy. She becomes a staple at Trivia Night, where she anchors the team with a ridiculous understanding of both art history and biology. Octavia, Raven, Monroe, and Harper immediately rope her into Girls Night, which has included an actual knife fight in the past. (Clarke loves it.) Miller starts dating her friend Monty, who’s apparently an analyst for the CIA, thoroughly entrenching Clarke in the group. Even Murphy only complains about her every other time they all hang out, which is virtually unprecedented. 

Slowly but surely, Clarke becomes Bellamy’s friend. 

She’s the only one who will watch terrible History Channel documentaries with him without making a drinking game. He’s not sure how much she really pays attention, but sometimes she’ll ask questions and just let him go off on whatever tangent he wants. They’re also the only ones who actually like the museums DC has to offer. 

(The first time Bellamy gets a glimpse of Clarke’s sense of humor is when she texts him an address and time to meet. When he gets there, he’s standing in front of the International Spy Museum. He’d passed the National Portrait Gallery on his way from the Metro. 

Once he’d finally gotten over the urge to just laugh like a madman in the middle of the sidewalk, Clarke is standing at his side, grinning like the devil. 

“Did you know this was here that first day?”

“Classified,” she grins, all her sternness vanished into thin air, and drags him inside.) 

Of course, not everything is rainbows and sunshine. Clarke has got a sharper tongue than nearly anyone he’s ever met and they trade barbs the way other people talk about the weather. 

It’s delightful.

Friendship, however, does not negate the fact that Clarke is a reason Octavia puts herself in danger on a semi-regular basis. 

Early on, Bellamy had asked his sister to just let him know when she was being sent out. He’d even offered to come up with a codeword she could text him, rather than communicate anything that could blow her cover. 

(Her response, verbatim: “You dweeb.” Which didn’t bother him at all. It’s not as if he had a great code word already picked out.)

(He did. It was Caligula.)

Maybe it’s because he knows what she’s doing now, but it seems like O is gone more often than not. Soon, it becomes less surprising to see Clarke than his own sister. Octavia always comes home, though, and usually tells him when she’s going to be out of town for more than 48 hours. 

Anytime she comes home with more than a bruise, he exercises his right to give Clarke the cold shoulder until either O knocks some sense into him or Clarke brings him take out from that Ethiopian place all the way across the city. 

(It's only happened twice and both times O had twisted an ankle on cobblestones.)

Bellamy tries not to think about what he would do if something worse happened.  

To distract himself, Bellamy throws himself into work. Since he never got a straight answer out of O or Clarke about what the CIA was doing responding to a hostage situation on American soil, Bellamy never quit the Sydney campaign. 

(“We weren’t responding,” was Clarke’s answer. “Your sister went rogue and infiltrated a tactical team just to make sure you were okay.”

“Like I was going to let some second-rate criminal kill you, big brother,” was Octavia’s.

Neither deigned to mention how they got the intel that the Re-Elect Sydney offices were the target of, even second-rate, criminals.)

It’s only a City Council election, but DC politics are a strange creature, attracting the ambitious, the idealistic, the well-connected, and on rare occasions, someone who is all three. 

Bellamy still wants to believe that Diana Sydney is one of those rare cases. She’d been a U.S. Senator for most of Bellamy’s childhood, but gave it up and moved to eastern DC to become a community advocate. She’d become a staple in his neighborhood, talking to everyone and unwilling to flinch away from discussing the inequality they had to live with. When an opening on her communications staff came up, Bellamy jumped at the chance to work for her. She hadn’t looked down on him because of his only partially completed degree, but let his writing speak for itself. 

Every time he brings up work around the secret agents, they just exchange cryptic looks and change the subject. He’s pretty sure they’d tell him if something truly shady was going down, but considering their standard answer to any question he has about their work is, “Classified,” he’s not about to hold his breath. 

Their weirdness about his boss should probably be enough to make him give his two weeks notice. However, the possibility of finding another job doing something he likes half as much as he likes ghost writing for Senator Sydney is slim to none. Sure, the economy’s bouncing back, but he can’t imagine there’s much of a market for speechwriters who’ve never actually finished college. So, Bellamy does what is rapidly becoming his signature move: ignore it and move on.

(Since no one tries to take the office hostage again, he assumes it’s not a bad decision.) 

He takes his cues from Clarke and O, who are so good at compartmentalizing Bellamy’s sure he still wouldn’t know about their double lives if they’d had their way. It’s easy enough. When the whole group’s together, they don’t talk about work anyway. Mostly they just trash talk each other and on Trivia Night, trash talk everyone else. 

“How doesn’t everyone know that Titian painted redheads?” Clarke cries, face flush with her whiskey cokes. “They’re literally called Titian-haired!”

“No one cares, Griffin,” Raven groans. 

“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees. “Plus it’s way sadder that people can’t name the seven wonders of the world.”

Miller throws a wadded up napkin at him and everyone else just rolls his eyes. Murphy, seated right next to Bellamy, mutters, “Keep it in your pants, Blake.”

If it were anyone besides Murphy, Bellamy would probably be thankful for the bar’s dim lighting. But it is Murphy and Bellamy definitely doesn’t give a shit about what Murphy thinks, so he ignores the warmth in his cheeks. Just like he ignores the way his stomach seems to drop when Clarke smiles, when Clarke laughs, when Clarke yawns. _When Clarke exists_ , say the traitorous parts of him.

“Bite me, Murphy.” 

 

* * *

 

Things even out. Somehow, Bellamy learns to worry less about O and rogue spies and undercover missions. Somehow, the Blakes fumble their way into the most adult and stable relationship they’ve ever had. It’s nice. 

Until it’s not. 

He’s just finishing up in the office one evening in the middle of October. With the election only a few weeks away, he is both swamped and biding his time. Sydney’s stump speech had been honed to a fine edge back in September and he only had to help prepare talking points for media appearances. On the other hand, the time is coming to start thinking about acceptance speeches and worrying about whether or not preparing a concession is too defeatist. 

As he’s walking out the door, his phone rings. 

A picture of Cinderella losing her shoe flashes on the screen and Bellamy smiles reflexively.

“Hey, Clarke.”

“Bellamy, I need to see you.”

It’s not that Bellamy’s been dreaming about some variation of that sentiment falling from Clarke’s lips, but that’s not all that far from the truth. He’d just imagined that when she said it she wouldn’t sound quite so panicked. 

“What’s wrong?” he demands, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to concentrate on the call. 

“I—“ she huffs impatiently. “This is not a conversation to have on the phone.”

“You called me,” he reminds her as gently as possible. 

“I know, but I didn’t know where you were. Are you at your place?”

“I’m on my way right now. I’ll be there in maybe fifteen minutes.” The line is silent for a beat too long. “Clarke,” he checks. 

Bellamy can hear the shaky breath she releases. “Yeah, okay. Okay. I’ll see you then.”

He almost insists she stays on the phone with him until he gets home, but she’s gone before he can get the words out. 

Running from the Metro stop to his apartment, Bellamy is winded by the time he makes it through the door. He’s gulping down a glass of water when— 

“Bellamy.”

He whips around, heart in his throat, and Clarke steps out of the shadows. 

“Christ, Clarke! Did you break into my apartment?”

She ignores him, just repeats his name.

“What?” He purposefully sets his glass on the counter and dabs at some of the wet spots that had splashed on his shirt in his surprise. "What is so important that you decided you couldn’t wait in the hall?”

“Octavia’s about to be burned.”

Bellamy’s world stops. Clarke had thought she was being funny when she took him to the International Spy Museum, but Bellamy had taken it upon himself to learn as much about spycraft as possible in the intervening weeks. Sure, a lot of that came from TV and movies and he wasn’t sure how accurate any of it was, but it was more than O would ever give him. 

That’s why he knows being burned is the worst thing that can happen to an agent. They’re cut off from their handler, from resources, from any form of protection. Bellamy can’t imagine what could have happened that would warrant this fate for his sister.

But she hasn’t been burned yet.

“What do you mean ‘about to be?’ Isn’t there anything the Agency can do to stop it?”

Clarke’s eyes are wide and grave as she shakes her head. “That’s the problem. It’s the Agency that’s going to burn her.”

Immediately, Bellamy is tearing around his apartment, gathering his keys and clothes and anything that might be useful. He’s untaping the bag of cash from the inside of his toilet tank when Clarke catches up to him. 

“What do you think you’re doing?"

“I’m going after her,” he growls like it’s the only possible answer. Which it is. Bellamy will choose Octavia every time, no matter the cost. 

“You can’t.” 

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

She makes an impatient noise and grabs at his arm. Bellamy swings around, ready to read her the riot act, but Clarke cuts him off. “No, I just meant _you_ can’t. You’re not trained, Bellamy. You don’t even know where she is or who has her or how to do this without getting someone killed. Without getting yourself killed.”

“If you think that means I’m not even going to try—“

“Of course not,” she assures him. " _We’ll_ do it.”

The magnitude of what she’s offering hits Bellamy like a ton of bricks. She would be throwing away her career, maybe more. “Clarke, you can’t.”

“Why do you think I'm even telling you? If I agreed with the Agency, then I would let O fend for herself. She’s more than capable under ordinary circumstances.” 

She waits a beat and it clicks. 

“But these circumstances aren’t,” Bellamy infers.

“That’s one way of putting it.” Clarke sighs and drags him back to the kitchen where she digs around in his cabinets until she finds a bottle of bourbon. The look she gives him is sheepish in the extreme. “Sorry, I don’t know if I can get through this without some help.” She gives herself a generous pour before taking a drag and then beginning. 

“I think your sister’s gotten a hold of information that was not meant for her and the Agency knows. Something big. They put out a burn notice on her today, saying that she’s been falsifying and sanitizing her reports, but I know she doesn’t. Half the time I end up writing her reports for her because she leaves them too long.”

Bellamy snorts at that. Octavia had never been the most diligent student. He’s not surprised she’s the same way with paperwork. 

“I smelled a rat. Monty initiated our codeword protocol for cases like this.” At Bellamy’s incredulous look, she explains,  "I’ve seen this happen before. A spy uncovers something they’re not meant to know and rather than risk it getting out, the Agency compromises the asset and ties up any loose ends.”

“And how do they do that?” 

Clarke’s significant look is answer enough. Bellamy drags in a shaky breath and as he exhales, feels the determination to save his sister settle in his bones. 

“What do we do?”

Four words and Bellamy suddenly finds himself on a plane for the first time in his life. Despite having no passport, Clarke hands him one once they’re in the air. He flips it open and it’s his picture staring up at him with a completely fabricated name and personal details. He raises an eyebrow at the only other person on the private jet with him.

Clarke shrugs. “Octavia asked me to make you a cover identity in case something were to happen.” A cloud passes over her face. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t what she was thinking.”

“Hey, at least I’m getting a free trip to Rome out of this,” he jokes, trying to distract her.

“Right. How could I pass up the opportunity to bring the boy who named his sister _Octavia_ to Rome?” Her grin is weak, but it’s there, which makes Bellamy feel a little better. When he’s talking to Clarke he’s not consumed with worry, either about his sister or the fact that he’s in a giant metal tube hurtling through the air. 

She must sense some of that worry, though, because she grabs his hand without prompting and twines their fingers together. Absently, he rubs his thumb across the back of her hand.

“Did O ever tell you the reason I do this?” she asks abruptly, frowning down at her lap. 

He shakes his head, unwilling to intrude on whatever’s got Clarke in a sharing mood. In the months that he’s known her, he’s discovered precisely three personal facts about her. One: She double majored in Human Biology and Art History, explaining her trivia skills. Two: Her mom lives in the District, but the two rarely talk. And three: She prefers Vietnamese egg rolls to Chinese. Yet, Bellamy inexplicably considers her to be one of his best friends. He listens raptly.

“My dad was a Company man. I didn’t know when I was growing up, but I _knew_.” She looks up at him and he nods encouragingly. Her responding smile is soft and so close to heartbreaking. "I knew he wasn’t like other kids’ dads and I loved him for it. He taught me everything I know about spycraft, not that I realized what he was doing. We’d write messages back and forth in code and he taught me all about tells and how to know when someone was lying to me.”

She takes a shuddering breath, “He disappeared when I was in high school. A few months later, they found his body.” Bellamy squeezes her hand, but doesn’t interrupt. “It wasn’t until I was recruited to the Agency that I actually found out he’d been an operative, too. They told me that his cover was blown while he was transporting eyes only intel and was taken out by enemy agents. They said he managed to hide the package and it had never been found. I believed them.

“I believed them for years until my own handler tried to burn me. Lexa was a double agent and thought that handling Jake Griffin’s daughter might get her access to the information he died for. When she finally figured out I didn’t have a clue, she burned me and told me the truth.” 

Clarke’s quiet for a few moments, looking pensive and sad, so Bellamy gives her a gentle prompt, “What did she tell you, Clarke?”

When she finally looks at him, her gaze burns. “My father found out that his handler was sanitizing his reports, not just taking out the names of confidential informants, but omitting actual intel that the Agency could have used. When he tried to alert the higher-ups, his handler put out the rumor that my dad had valuable information on him while he was on a mission in the Soviet Bloc. He never made it home.”

“But you still work for the Agency,” Bellamy says, confused. “If you were burned and have all this baggage, how do you still work for them?”

“Someone needs to do it. And if you’ve got a good enough nugget, being burned is pretty reversible,” Clarke shrugs off his concerns. Apparently the story of her survival is for another time. “Besides, I refused to go back into the field. I don’t trust anyone to have my back the way they should, not after Lexa. I told them I’d be a handler or nothing at all. That way I could make sure no one was going to be betrayed the way my dad and I were.” 

A question niggles at Bellamy and he lets it escape almost without meaning to. “Do you know who your dad’s handler was? I mean, does he still work—“

“Thelonius Jaha. He was my best friend’s dad and practically my uncle. But he works with my mom at the Department of Defense, now.”

“Oh. Does she…” Bellamy can’t even bring himself to finish the thought, but Clarke has no such compunctions. 

“Yes.”

There’s nothing he can say to that. He just squeezes her hand as comfortingly as possible and changes the subject. 

“So, are we going to need a cover story?”

Clarke shakes herself a little and repeats him, “A cover story?”

“Yeah, you know. Like I’m a wealthy business man looking to buy some antiquities and you’re my trophy wife or something?”

“Trophy wife?” she parrots again, unimpressed.

“Fine, I’ll be your trophy husband.” That earns a laugh and Bellamy grins down at his beautiful friend. In spite of the pressure and anxiety, he doesn’t want her to feel as bad as he does. She’s not responsible for Octavia the way he is, though he’s sure she would disagree with him on that front.

“Don’t overthink this. If anyone asks, we’re tourists. We’re probably not even going to need to check into a hotel, and I doubt we’ll have to go anywhere too suspicious. If O’s gone to ground the way I think she has, it’ll just be a matter of finding her before anyone else does.”

Clarke makes it sound easy.

 

* * *

 

It is not easy. 

Somehow, in all the time that Bellamy has spent thinking about Ancient Rome and Augustus and gladiators, he has never really realized that Rome is still a world capital that covers nearly 500 square miles. How they’re going to track down O in this jumble of antiquity and modernity, he has no clue. 

Thankfully, that’s where Clarke comes in handy. 

She picks up a car from the rental stand in what sounds like flawless Italian. When she turns back to Bellamy while they wait for the attendant to find the keys, he just raises an eyebrow. 

“It’s a standing reservation maintained by the Company. By the time they figure out someone’s taken the car out, we should be back in the air and technically in international airspace.”

Once they have the car, Clarke drives them through the streets of Rome, and Bellamy does his best to keep his mouth from falling open in awe every five minutes. When they whip past the Colosseum, Bellamy cranes around in his seat until he can’t see it through the rear windshield any longer. When he turns back, Clarke gives him a sympathetic look. 

“You’ll get to come back,” she says, like it’s a certainty. 

Bellamy doesn’t reply because he’s not sure he can keep bitterness from his response.

Soon, Clarke’s pulled to a stop in what looks like a public park of some kind. Rather than head off for the green space that surrounds them, she walks towards a building that Bellamy can only describe as palatial. 

“Where are we?”

“The Galleria Borghese. Last time O and I were in Rome, I showed her a dead drop my dad set up here. Hopefully she remembered and raided it, maybe even left a clue of where she’s heading.” 

Clarke avoids the entrance, veering to the right, past a marble Roman missing an arm, and down a narrow road between the gallery and a fenced in garden. Towards the back of the garden, she crouches down next to a utility panel in the ground and brushes off some loose gravel. 

After a moment of fiddling, she pops open the cover and peers down. Not once does she glance around to check if they’re being watched. Bellamy can barely stay inside his skin he feels so jumpy, but he does his best to follow Clarke’s lead and joins her on the ground, blocking out everything else.

In the nearly empty space is an automatic handgun. 

It kind of makes Bellamy want to throw up, the thought of Octavia with a gun, but Clarke nods thoughtfully. 

“This is good,” she explains. “It means she doesn’t think she’s being followed by anyone dangerous enough to warrant this.” She nudges the gun to the side of the box and scoops up what remains. 

Bellamy had taken it for trash. Just bits of paper and garbage.

“Does anyone else know about this?” he asks doubtfully.

“Yes. But no one who’s been in Rome recently enough to have left these here.”

The sight of a bit of blue in the far corner of the box erases all of his doubts. When he plucks it out and examines it in the sunlight, it’s impossible to deny. A tiny, blue butterfly charm twinkles in the sun. It’s the same charm Bellamy gave to Octavia on her first day of public high school and as far as he knew, she hadn’t gone anywhere without it since. 

When he looks at Clarke, the despair must be evident in his eyes, because she leans against him gently, tucking her face against his shoulder. 

“We’ll find her,” she promises, voice fierce and steady. 

He nods jerkily and motions to the junk in her hands. 

There’s a prayer card, the kind street preachers hand out by the hundreds, a paper straw wrapper that’s been accordion folded into one long zig-zag, a credit card receipt signed with a shaky “Michelangelo,” and a business card for an enoteca punctured with several holes and a “C” scrawled on the back. 

As far as clues go, Bellamy is less than impressed. He examines the prayer card. 

On one side is the portrait of a haloed old man holding a key and a book. On the other is the “Prayer to Saint Peter.”

“'Thou art the Shepherd of sheep, the Prince of the Apostles, unto thee were given the keys of the kingdom of heaven,'” he intones. “Why would O even keep this let alone leave it here?”

“I’d say this is just pocket litter, but I don’t think O’s cover identity was supposed to be religious. It’s got to be a hint about where she’s headed.” 

Bellamy puts the prayer card aside and picks up the stab-wounded business card. He ignores the information on the front of the card and stares at the bold letter on the back. 

“You know,” he muses, “This looks like one of those visual puns they print in the newspaper next to the crossword. O and I did those all the time as kids.”

Clarke considers for a moment, humming thoughtfully. “You’ve always protected her. Maybe she knew you would insist on coming.  Maybe this clue is for you, Bellamy.” 

He stares at the card even harder, tries to remember how it was to think in puns. “All right, I think the C is for the word sea.” Bellamy sighs in frustration, “Alternatively, it means nothing and it’s just a holey wine store business card. Wait,” he pauses, heart racing as his thoughts go a mile a minute. “Holey. Holy? The Holy See!”

Clarke lights up. “That’s it! Vatican City is only a few miles from here. That’s where O must have holed up.”

Bellamy looks at the rest of the hints. “One must be for you, too, Clarke.” 

She nods and points at the receipt. “I took O to this gelateria the first time she had a mission in Rome. They’re the only place with strawberry champagne gelato in the city, but I don’t think that’s where she is.” Her eyes travel down the receipt and linger on the signature line. “That has to be her hint. Michelangelo only signed one sculpture in his life. I complained about not getting to see it when we were here last.”

“What is it?”

“The _Pietà._ ” She sounds wistful. 

“Is it on display somewhere in the city?”

“Yeah,” realization dawns in her eyes. “It’s at the Vatican. In St. Peter’s Basilica.”

Their gazes land on the prayer card simultaneously and then shoot up to each other. Clarke’s smile is radiant and Bellamy feels like his grin will crack his face wide open.

If the situation were even slightly less pressing, he would toss out every carefully constructed reason he’s come up with and kiss her. The revelation isn’t shocking, he’d had to come up with all those reasons after all, but enough to rock him back into the present. 

“Let’s go,” he says, offering Clarke his hand. 

In no time at all, they’re standing outside St. Peter’s Basilica in the heart of the Holy See. 

“There’s still one clue left to figure out,” he observes. 

“We’ll get there,” Clarke smiles at him. 

They head inside and Bellamy immediately feels dwarfed by the building. Clarke drags him over to where the _Pietà_  sits behind bulletproof glass. He thinks she’s admiring the statue, which deserves it, until she drags his body up against hers. 

Her hand cuffs against his neck, forcing him down to her level. 

“There’s a Camorra hitter here already. And I think I saw Cosa Nostra, too. Follow my lead.”

She doesn’t give him much of a chance before her lips slant against his. Since Bellamy is pretty sure this will never happen again, he wastes no time in responding. 

His arm wraps around her waist and he buries the other hand in her hair. It’s softer than he could have imagined. She tastes like secrets, which is more poetic than Bellamy can usually manage when kissing someone, but it’s Clarke. Bellamy would compose epics to her if she gave him the chance. When she pulls away, Clarke’s sigh puffs wistfully against his jaw. 

“I think they’re gone,” she murmurs. 

Bellamy nods, trying to remember that they’re here to save his sister, not make out at famous religious sites. 

“Also, I think I figured out the last hint.” 

In a whirlwind, Clarke pulls him back out into the sunshine and around the side of the building, explaining as she goes. “You can climb up to the roof of the Basilica. I think the straw was supposed to look like stairs.”

“Octavia’s on the roof?” The haze from the kiss is finally clearing away. 

“Yeah. The Vatican has ridiculous security and all the tourists are going to keep hitters from trying to take O by force. Plus, churches have historically offered sanctuary to the persecuted. It’s the perfect place to hide out.”

Once they buy tickets up to the Cupola, Bellamy and Clarke race up the seemingly interminable spiral of stairs. They brush by alarmed tourists in their rush, and exclamations in languages Bellamy doesn’t understand echo around them. When they finally break into the fresh air, they split apart wordlessly. 

“O!” Bellamy calls, his heart in his throat. He’s managed to keep his cool up until now based on the knowledge that he can’t help his sister if he’s losing it. 

On the other side of the circular platform, he can hear Clarke’s voice echoing his calls. Before he knows it, he’s face to face with Clarke again and his heart falls from his throat to his stomach.

“She’s not here?” he asks and he can hear how broken his voice sounds.

Clarke slots herself into his arms, murmuring her apologies. 

“Now there’s something I never thought I’d see,” drawls the most beautiful voice Bellamy has ever heard. 

He turns almost in slow motion and takes in his sister, looking haggard and cagy, but whole and _there_. His heart lodges itself in his throat and stays there. In a rush, his arms are full of Octavia. 

 

* * *

 

Bellamy wishes he could say he knew how Clarke managed to smuggle them back to the airport, onto the jet, and into international airspace. Honestly, though, he was too ecstatic to have his sister back, he couldn’t really absorb anything else. 

He takes his first deep breath in what feels like days when the plane finally leaves the ground. Bellamy leans back in his seat and closes his eyes, trying to reconcile what exactly his life has become. Distantly, he can hear Clarke and O debriefing. 

“No, he doesn’t need to know about this,” came his sister’s voice.

“Octavia, the man was about to mount his own search for you, without training, resources, or intel. He deserves to know.”

“Fine. But I tell him.”

Bellamy’s already out of his seat and approaching as they reach this decision. 

“What do I deserve to know?”

Octavia meets his gaze levelly and lets her story spill. 

There’d been chatter and all kinds of unsubstantiated intel from all over that a black bag job was going down at Sydney’s campaign offices, which was how she’d known to infiltrate the SWAT team that fateful night. Ever since the hostage situation, O had started digging into the group responsible. They claimed the name Maun-de and had ties to nearly every organized crime syndicate in the world. Why they would be interested in a candidate for DC City Council, though, was unclear. 

The answer came when Octavia stumbled across a memo from when Sydney was in the Senate. It alleged that Senator Sydney was under investigation for involvement with organized crime and international drug trafficking. 

Senator Diana Sydney. As in the Diana Sydney who is also Bellamy's boss. 

Octavia started looking into the Sydney campaign’s financials. She had a lot of donors, but some of them were actually shell companies with bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Panama, every tax shelter on Earth. They were almost certainly fronts for Maun-de. Essentially, the campaign was one massive money laundering scheme. Maun-de would make donations to Sydney, who would spend that money on businesses and “consultants” from the organization, filtering the now clean money back into the hands of criminals.

Apparently, Sydney started skimming from the top of these donations, keeping bigger and bigger takes for herself and eventually warranting the invasion of her offices.

O hadn’t wanted to tell Bellamy because she knew how much he admired the senator. 

“Jesus, O. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know that my boss is an actual felon.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters before yawning hugely and eventually being convinced to take a nap. 

Bellamy slumps in his seat next to Clarke. “Guess I’m out of a job,” he sighs. 

Clarke smiles, exhaustion coloring her voice, “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

"What about you?”

“Hmm?”

Bellamy rolls his head to his shoulder so he can peer at the blonde. “What are you going to do now?” 

She sighs heavily. “I’m getting out,” she says, the decision weighing heavily on her words. "I can’t work for them anymore, not after my dad and Octavia. And me,” she adds as a soft afterthought.

“That’s probably for the best,” he agrees. Bellamy breathes an internal sigh of relief. With O burned, he hadn’t wanted to think about Clarke going back to the Agency on her own.

“Yeah.” They sit in silence for a minute. Clarke worries her lip and opens her mouth to speak a few minutes, but never says anything.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. When she still looks uncertain, he nudges her gently. “You can tell me."

“It’s just that I don’t know if I’m going to make a very good regular person.”

Clarke has a point. She’d practically been raised to be a spy. The Agency recruited her straight from school, so she’d never had a civilian job. Still, he doesn’t doubt Clarke’s capacity to adapt.

He leans into her, invading her space just a little bit. If he’s ever going to make a move, it has to be now. “Well, I happen to be a phenomenal regular person. And I happen to have it on excellent authority that I am about to have a lot of free time on my hands.” He smirks down at her before the insecurity kicks in. What if that kiss hadn’t meant anything to her. What if that’s just how Clarke Griffin kisses everyone? "If you want help, that is,” he mutters, clearing his throat.

“Are you offering me lessons?” Clarke’s smirk is a match for his. Her eyes honest-to-god sparkle in the dim lighting. Bellamy’s positive he’s not imagining the way she leans up to him ever so slightly. 

“Yeah, but they might have to be immersion,” he manages to get out smoothly. The smirk is gone, he is full on beaming down at this beautiful woman. "You’re going to have to spend all your time with me, just to make sure you don’t pick up bad habits.”

“I can live with that.”

This time, he gets to kiss her. It’s cramped and awkward and they break apart when the pilot’s voice broadcasts through the cabin, alerting them to upcoming turbulence, but it’s still perfect. 

He rests his forehead against hers, grin fit to rival the sun. “I bet we can handle it.”

“I wouldn’t bet against us,” she agrees, settling against his shoulder.

Somehow, in the past 24 hours, Bellamy has found out about a threat to his sister, left the country for the first time, followed a ridiculous scavenger hunt in the one city he’s always wanted to visit, found his sister again, and gotten over himself to make a move on the girl he likes. No one would call it a perfect day, but Bellamy can’t imagine a better one. 

The thing is, he’s sure the best is yet to come. 

**Author's Note:**

> I will be the first to admit that this got a little out of hand. But it was a ton of fun! If you would also like to learn some spy lingo (which I did not spend a whole day researching and then promptly forget about) check out the the International Spy Museum for a quick intro: http://www.spymuseum.org/education-programs/news-books-briefings/language-of-espionage/
> 
> Also, drop me a comment/kudos if you'd be so kind!


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